SanDisk SDSDB-256-A10 256 MB Secure Digital Card (Retail Package) Reviews

• Get a Lexar

  
  By A5JLAU2ARJ0BO on 2003-04-02
  If you search around on the Web (e.g., brighthand, pocketpc thoughts...) you'll see that quite a number of users have problems with Sandisk memory cards. They used to be the cheapest, but not any more. For the same price (or even lower), you can get much-better-quality memory cards from Lexar. I highly recommend Lexar for reliability, speed, and lower power consumption.
  
  

• An exelent card, but does not come formatted.

  
  By A2XNMWFO88EQ0W on 2003-06-08
  I use the one of this size and brand card that was included with my SanDisk cruzer reader. The card is extremely fast, and is extremely reliable. I also noticed that the SanDisk Cruzer worked a lot faster than my digital camera, so it's a good buy for a few extra bucks if you want to get that.

  There are two reasons many people have had trouble with Sandisk SD cards.

  First, the obvious, like any storage device, it must be formatted before use.

  The reason SanDisk does not format the card in the factory, is likely due to the fact that it takes longer to manufacture that way. Second is that some items, such as some digital cameras, must reformat cards. There are also the issues of FAT16, FAT32, or VFAT (FAT32 with long filenames, etc.) Most PDAs would want VFAT, but many digital cameras can't handle it, and some even require the older DOS FAT16 format, as it is much easier to handle with small processors.

  Additionally the SD card standard is designed that some devices will accept a maximum size, or only a certain size. Many earlier Palm PDAs only supported 64MB, but most newer ones support more.
  
  

• Not all digital devices work with all SD cards

  
  By AC8E3L5ZM01P on 2005-08-18
  There are a number of people leaving reviews here that bash SanDisk, and I'm sure that their experience justifies their opinions. But let me relate my own experience.
  
  I bought a couple of motion-activated trail cameras and bought several Kingston 256MB SD cards for them. I decided on Kingston based on so many favorable reviews of their SD cards on Amazon. But the cameras were not compatible at all with the Kingston cards. The cameras wouldn't power up in the manner that the user manual said they would, I couldn't access the menu screen, none of the set-up buttons worked, and the LCD screens showed things never discussed in the user manual. Things were just generally screwed up, and I wondered if I had received a defective unit.
  
  I called the camera manufacturer and they said that they also had experienced trouble with certain "offbrand" makes of SD cards, but that they hadn't had any trouble with SanDisk. I had never heard that Kingston was considered an offbrand, but I decided to experiment using another manufacturer's SD card. I inserted a SanDisk SD card, and the camera worked beautifully. Perhaps SanDisk adheres more closely to guidelines for cross-compatibility between digital devices, but that was a lesson for me.
  
  Contrary to the experiences of some, I have never had problems with a SanDisk memory card - CF or SD - whereas this is the second time I've had problems with a Kingston memory card - one time it was a 512MB CF card that suddenly went belly-up after not much use, and now their 256MB SD card was having compatibity issues. I'm sticking with Sandisk or Lexar.
  
  

• Great product must have for any Pocket PC user.

  
  By A29Z6SJZF58WNW on 2002-10-14
  I just got a Toshiba e310 and although 32MB is a big step up from my old 8MB Handspring I need more. This 256MB SD card is great. I keep all my mp3s and files on here. I've had no problems with it at all. I would be nice if it had a larger capacity like the compact flash cards, but it doesn't put nearly as much strain on my batteries so its worth it. For anyone with a Pocket PC, this is a must have!
  
  

• Issues, many issues

  
  By A25937XOMYW109 on 2003-09-19
  So I bought the SD 256 for my camera. So, what is that 234Mb limit anyways? But worse, it died on me, luckely after I unloaded the pics. Not readable in any device (camera, PDA, PC). So I had it exchanged. Gues what? Not even 3 month later, it crashed again. This time with about 170 unsaved pics from a friends wedding in Florence, Italy. Unreadable! Unrecoverable! Gone! Needless to say that I become a less happy customer. It seems to be an issue with Taiwan produced cards in the whole range (16-256Mb). The China ones seem okay (yeah, I know China thinks Taiwan is part of China, that's an other discussion, there are different plants)
  
  
• Bad SD cards made in China and/or Taiwan
  By A3LSDG18PPRA4T on 2004-04-26
  I am a bit upset. I finaly jumped onboard the GPS passion, got myself a nice 512MB SD card from SANDISK, spent a great deal of money for the Destinator3 product and ther actual Bluetooth GPS receiver etc. I have a brand new IPAQ 1945, so i figured i was in luck.
  Well, i downloaded my MAPS onto the SD card (USA5 East Coast 280M in size) and the product basically failed to start. It gave me Map Bit errors found, bad address info etc. I spent several days trying to figure it out, including time spent with the Destinator support folks. I also ran several tests against the SD card itself, which passed. SO, FINALLY I gave up on the product, and spent another 100$ on Mapopolis. Again, i had the same type of problems... Then by accident i come to find out, this indeed was and is some sort of SD card problem. Other people have reported this in the past on: http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4383, and other web sites as well.
  Apparently a great deal of cards made in China and Taiwan are more or less worthless. Especially they can't handle large chunks of data such as these GPS maps without corrupting them. I switched to a Japanese made card, and now all my apps works again!! Go figure.

  But, i am upset. I spent a lot of money on my SANDISK card, and it should never have failed.

  I would love to address this issue with SANDISK and other similar vendors. If anyone else has similar bad experiences, could you please post them here, or email me at jorgenchr@hotmail.com ??

  I feel strongly that vendors like SANDISK should make this public knowledge and offer free exchange / Money back on these faulty chinese made cards. Maybe giving them a list of people being affected would get them going
  
  

• Great card and excellent value
  By A3S87ZOPB3UM9N on 2003-05-19
  I have a Kodak DX4330 and at
  Best quality 3.1MP, this gives me 203 pictures,
  Better quality gives me 366 pictures
  Good quality gives me 740 pictures

  Other cameras due to compression and quality variations will be different.

  Just in case the other readers don't know, the MMC and SD card are the same format. The only difference is two things. The SD card is a little thicker (still seems to fit everywhere an MMC card does) and the SD card has an extra. It has a little slider that allows the user to keep from accidentally deleting or changing items on a card. This also keeps you from taking pictures on the card if you forget to switch it back. But then most cameras or other devices should remind you of this.

  The SD aspect to this MMC card also allows me to ensure the safety of my untransferred pictures as well. If I'm passing around my camera at a family gathering, first I slide the securing switch to the "lock" position to be sure no pictures can be deleted. Then I can be sure no one can accidentally delete my pictures. Unless others are aware of this feature, they would find it difficult to delete them unless they knew about this.

  The only tough thing about doing this, is remembering to slide the switch back off before I take new pictures. But then my Kodak camera would remind me to do this anyway, if I was not in Review.

  Great card, excellent value.
  
  

• Crash and Burn
  By A3TI7TN1ZB8SD on 2003-11-02
  I should have known based on the various rants about this card in various forums. After working well in my Dell Axim for several months, tonight the card became corrupted and cannot be formatted. (I lost several pictures I just downloaded from my camera.)

  Buy at your own risk. If it works great, fine. If it doesn't, you have been warned (like I was before I purchased this card).
  
  

• Satisfied, dis-satisfied, satisfied again
  By on 2003-06-04
  I began using my card in my digital camera & it worked wonderful. I also used it in my PDA, and again it worked great.

  However, about 1 & 1/2 mos after purchase, I went to copy/paste files onto the card in my card reader, and while all seemed to go well it didn't. The card had a fatal crash. My pda wouldn't recognize it, the camera wouldn't either, nothing would.

  So, I contacted amazon.com and discovered once the product is in the buyer's hands - they're out of the loop. So, I contacted SanDisk, and they were most helpful. I had to send my card in, but I got a new one in return. Yes, it cost me postage, but I still haven't paid what I would have paid in the stores. Well not exactly, as I purchased another card (from a local retailer) until my replacement card arrived.

  The new one works fine so far... will see how it is a few months from now. But I learned an important lesson - buy on the net & something goes wrong... you get to deal with the manufacturer. BUT, if you buy from various local retailers (or their web sites) & something goes wrong - they replace it then & there, AND they deal with the manufacturer.
  
  

• Excellent Card
  By A58N07M0ZCYMB on 2004-05-09
  I bought this card for my KODAK CX6330 3.1MP digital camera. On this camera, at best resolution, I can take 306 pictures and/or 16 minutes of video. After a lot of use, it hasn't failed or gave me any problems. In fact, it's at least 3x faster than the internal memory when taking, deleting and viewing/thumbing through pictures. Video taking is very nice and fast as well, no problems there, it looks great when watched on TV with friends/family. Approximate download times through cable provided with my camera are about 3 minutes for 50megs of data. Mine is manufactured in China. I would recommend it for use in digital cameras. I'm considering buying another card of 256 or 512meg for making longer videos and to have even more shots when on vacation.
  
  
• How many pictures will it store?
  By A25HBO5V8S8SEA on 2004-11-05
  How many pictures will it store? It is the most commonly asked question from digital camera enthusiast but usually the question that is the most difficult to get a straight answer about. Well, considering I worked in the memory industry for over 7 years I can help clarify this perplexing question and do so unbiased as I have since changed industries.
  
  The SanDisk SDSDB-256-A1O 256MB Secure Digital Card, like most 256MB cards, will store on average 284 pictures when used with a 2 megapixel camera, 213 images when used with a 3 megapixel camera, 128 pictures when used with a 4 megapixel camera, 102 images when used with a 5 megapixel camera, and 80 pictures when used with a 6 megapixel camera. These numbers are based off the assumption that you are going to shoot your images at the highest quality JPEG setting available for the camera and understand that they are estimates and may be off by as much as 10 percent due to numerous factors including the complexity of the scene being shot and the compression algorithm used by your specific camera.
  
  I truly hope this review was helpful to you in determining whether this card is the right capacity for your specific needs.
  
  
• The one I bought is bad !
  By A3TF1OZGZZ8YUX on 2003-10-15
  I was buying this item in order to use it as an SD card on my new Garmin ique 3600 GPS.
  While trying to transfer maps prepared by Palm host "map install" tool, I figured out that once data size exceeds ~110 Mbytes it simply can not be transferred, since there is some timeout.
  I thought it is a problem with Garmin map database, but I needed to double check it. So, I simply grouped together 120 Mbytes of mp3 files (each of 6Mbyte). It got hunging out after the 18th file.
  So, I can use it as 110 Mbyte card, which I could buy at 50 USD. I have tried to play the mp3 file and after 3 replayes the PDA freezed and I had to reset.
  Needless to say that I tried using Lexar's 128 Mbytes SD card that I already bought, and I had no problems replaying the mp3 file.
  I also tried writing to it, using the Toshiba SD card reader/writer on my Laptop, and again - not all data was written, though the iQueue software on the iQue3600 accessed the written data (the one I managed to write) and handled it correctly.
  
  Conclusion:
  The card I bought mulfunctions on more than one device. At the time being, I am contacting SanDisk support to replace this card. I hope the one I'll get instead is better. If so, I'll try to refine my review.
  
  
• Unfortunately, not a good purchase for me
  By A2MFR262JMNCTS on 2003-05-15
  I just bought a Toshiba e755 from Amazon and expected to use a pair of SanDisk 256MB SD cards but when all parts arrived, the SanDisk cards seem to be nonfunctional in this PDA (even though several reviews of both SD and PDA used both together!)

  When I inquired at Toshiba, they didn't confirm or deny that the SanDisk products should or wouldn't work, they merely said to check the manufacturer's website for a compatibilty list.

  When I did that and selected SD cards and Toshiba products, no results came up which, while not stating it unequivocally, implies that SanDisk SD media is not compatible with the Toshiba products!

  How something with an "SD Logo" on it would end up being incompatible with another product also bearing that same logo is beyond me.

  So you may want to think twice before buying this SanDisk SD card if you have a Toshiba e750/755
  
  

• Doesn't work in Dell Axim or in my Kodak Digital Camera
  By on 2003-06-10
  There is a reason why the Sandisk 256 mb card is the cheapest, it has problems. I first purchased it to use in my Dell Axim (Pocket PC). I kept losing the data and having to reformat the card. It seems to have the most problems storing or deleting large files (MP3s, video, ebooks, etc.).

  I recently bought a new Kodak Digital Camera (DX6340). It uses SD, so thinking maybe the problem with the Sandisk was related to my Axim, I started to use it in my camera. And the same problem happened the first time I used it. I even tried the fancy software to format the card and it doesn't help either.

  Needless to say, I am very disappointed. I have learned a difficult lesson, do your homework before purchasing. I researched my digital camera (btw, which I love.... highly recommend the DX6340) and my Pocket PC (ditto on the Axim), I didn't think about memory. I replaced the Sandisk with a Lexar 256 mb SD and it works great in the digital camera and PocketPC. Do some research in user forums on line and you will see that the Sandisk has problems in many devices, especially in PocketPC devices (Ipaq, Toshiba, Palm, Dell Axim, etc.) Based on this, SanDisk should recall this memory and fix the problem.
  
  

• No problems for me.
  By A3V1OMEJKORMWG on 2003-10-04
  Reading the previous reviews, one might be led to believe that SanDisk makes shoddy products. My experience has been quite the opposite. My Kodak camera came with a 32 MB SanDisk SD card, and we bought a 128MB SanDisk card to go along with it. Then when prices came down a bit, we went for the SanDisk 256MB. We have had ZERO problems with any of these cards. I use the 128 MB with my PNY card reader to shuttle photos, mp3s, etc, among my 3 computers; no problems whatsoever. I would not hesitate to buy more SD cards from SanDisk.
  
  
• Works great in my Rio MP3 player
  By A32VZ1X93BQXUH on 2003-11-01
  I plugged it in, opened the Rio software (Rio S10 MP3 player), hit "format" on the card and it worked like a champ. The S10 already had a 64 Meg card in it and I can swap back and forth from card to card on the fly with no hesitation from the player.

  I couldn't be happier.
  
  

• Works fine
  By A2FTCH80DSYS7L on 2003-11-05
  I have this card in my Tungsten E. It works well. I play a lot of MP3's from this this card without any problems and I store seven large reference books on the card that open up very fast. If your pda opens these files slowly, it may be your pda or the operating system. Works fine for me.
  
  
• Seamless and versatile
  By on 2003-01-02
  I bought this card for my Rio S50 MP3 player, where it worked like a champ. When I bought my daughter a Kodak digital camera, I popped it out of the Rio and into the camera where it worked just as well. Only problem is now I've got to buy more of them to feed my kids' SD-compatible toys. But at these prices, even that isn't so bad.
  
  
• Works in Minolta Dimage just fine...
  By on 2003-06-28
  I have had no problems with this card in my Minolta Dimage. Great pictures, great MPEG movies, great transfer rate. However, many other people have had issues with this card, expecially on Pocket PC devices, so I give it only four stars...
  
  
• Great Product
  By ALJGB7XHPFCR on 2004-04-17
  I use this memory card in my 4 megapixel digital camera. I save all the photos on the highest image size, and I still never have to worry about filling up the card, unless I am on an extended vacation. I usually get about 130 photos on this card. I have never had any problems with lost photos, or downloadingto my computer. At $65.00 this product was a bargain.
  
  
• Horrible Card
  By on 2003-08-12
  I have had this card for three months and I have had tons of problems. My camera couldn't read the card a few times and I had to reformatt. Now, card can't be read at all from camera or computer. A waste of money!
  
  
• 2 died on me taking with it dozens of pictures I took
  By A3RM8GW09J6QWE on 2005-01-02
  I already owned two of these. First one died destroying all the pictures that were on it. The store replaced it for free. Then the replacement one died. Wish i just asked for my money back and have gotten panasonic sd, or even lexar. SanDisk is a terrible company, no joke. How hard is it to make these things work?
  
  
• Died after little use
  By A1B9X9I1WKMRJH on 2005-01-09
  I bought one of these to use in my digital camera because I have another card by SanDisk and that one has worked just fine for years. This one died after about 50 pictures. Now I have to go through all the hassle of getting a replacement and not know if that one will last or not. Very disappointed. My original card was made in Taiwan, this new, bad one was made in China.
  
  
• NOT AVAILABLE IN UK
  By A13JFNAORO3NLF on 2002-12-31
  IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO ORDER THIS ITEM TODAY AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE MEM CARD WHEN IT TURNED UP.
  BUT FOR SOME REASON YOU ALLOW UK CUSTOMERS TO DRIBBLE OVER THE PRODUCT AND THE COMPETITIVE PRICE BUT NOTE:- ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE U.S -- ERR !!
  
  
• Works great for me
  By on 2004-07-14
  This is one of the cheaper SD cards I had seen. I have had this card for about two years and it has never given me a problem to this day. I recommend this product
  
  
• Avoid this digital card!
  By on 2003-06-18
  We own a Kodak DX4430. Installed this card and went on vacation. It was our first anniversary. Half way through our vacation, we are taking pictures. Turned the camera off and then back on again later only to see a message on the LCD screen, disk needs formatting. Well, we lost all the pictures that we took. Kodak says that 3rd party cards do that for absolutely no reason. They may work for a time, then stop working and then work again. Do not risk losing pictures like we did if you own a Kodak camera!! We love the camera, just [not]this disk ...
  
  
• SanDisk still the finest
  By ALZ79PVER956T on 2003-08-16
  I have tried 5 brands of Secure Digital chips and it is my opinion that SanDisk makes the best product. I use them in my pocket pc and my digital camera, the chips are reliable and fast. I have had two chips from another manufacturer fail for no apparent reason. I will stick with what I have confidence in, and right now that is SanDisk.
  
  
• doesn't work, but send it in for a replacement
  By A112UZSIUGN3FG on 2004-03-26
  the first one i got shipped from amazon didn't work at all.. it sucked. it didn't work in any digital camera i used..

  but there's a warranty on it, so you just need to call sandisk.. send it in, and they'll replace it for you.. the one they sent me seems to be a different model or something.. and it works fine..

  so if you don't want to have to go through the whole replacement process, get a different card.
  
  

• Don't buy this product!!!!
  By A1P3FXGR6EWEQ6 on 2004-12-10
  I just lost a bunch of photos on this card from our trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. I also have a 256 from Lexar and Panasonic. No problems with those. The photos were still on the SanDisk card when we returned home. I put it in the card reader and nothing came up. I tried again two days later, and got some puzzling information; put it back into the camera (Pentax Optio 550) and got a "card not formatted" message. Buy cheap, get cheap. WARNING - DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT. Unfortunately I couldn't give it zero or negative stars.
  
  
• Great memory card for Toshiba e310
  By on 2002-11-07
  I use it with my Toshiba e310 pocket pc. I've had it for a month and it works great. I use it to store MP3's and other data.
  
  

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